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Topic: Unpopular Gaming Opinions

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Grumblevolcano

I think retro loses its meaning after Gen 6 with the exception of Wii and DS because of the impact of closing a digital store when the vast majority of content for the system is digital only.

Grumblevolcano

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kkslider5552000

Nowadays I'd consider retro to be games before like...the Xbox 360 launch. That feels like the biggest turning point and shift in gaming and...all the SD games released afterwards were released afterwards but I refuse to call Gears of War retro until I have grey hair, so Okami is still not retro to me either. (not to mention how weird it would be for NSMB, a game designed to be a return to retro Mario, to itself be retro)

Non-binary, demiguy, making LPs, still alive

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Slim_in_Blue

I don’t know how unpopular of an opinion this is, but it sure isn’t one I see at all so I’m just gonna throw it out there.
Good characters are more important than a good story. Story is still really important, don’t get me wrong, but if the characters in the story are written horribly (whatever a “horrible character” is to you), there’s no relatability in the story and no main reason to keep going. The story could be peak fiction, a perfect 10/10, but if the characters are a 3 or 4/10 at best, is it worth continuing the story if the characters acting out the plot suck? If a story’s awful that can wreck it too, but I think there’s more of a grace period if you have a stellar cast of characters. Personally, I’d say if a story has 10/10 characters and like a 7/10 plot, it evens out to a 9/10 overall.
A good example of this is Persona 4 and its spin-offs, a game I can’t stop talking about! P4’s basic plot is a murder mystery, and a pretty good one. Depending on how much you like the genre, I’ve seen people consistently give it somewhere between an 8/10 and a 10/10. But the biggest thing people praise about P4 is the characters. In my case they’re what made the game my favorite game ever. The game is solid and the plot is solid, but I loved the characters so much that they left a noticeable impact on me that’s stuck with me since I finished it. This general idea carried into the spin-offs which have the same cast, but are usually agreed to have lesser plots. They don’t have BAD plots, but they’re generally agreed to be 8/10 at best from what I’ve seen. Personally I’d give the plot of the first spin-off P4 Arena (and Ultimax the updated version) a 7/10 thanks to huge pacing issues. But people still enjoy the stories because the characters they love are still there like they were in the original game, and even the new characters are pretty great too. P4 has helped me realize that a big reason why I love a lot of the stories I do is because the characters are relatable or interesting or just fun, and give the plot more life as a result.
Anyway thanks for coming to my TED Talk! There’s my Persona 4 propaganda for the week! Apologies for the length, I’m typing this on my phone late at night since I can’t fall asleep really. If it’s a bit rambly or incoherent, that’s probably why😅

Just a guy who likes games

FishyS

@Slim_in_Blue I would argue Mario counts for this. He is a 'good character' in some sense (maybe not the sense you mean above but his creators had to have done something right to make him so iconic) and this makes us completely forgive the awful stories in most of his games.

Edited on by FishyS

FishyS

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VoidofLight

@FishyS Ehhh. I wouldn't count Mario, since Mario itself isn't even a story-based series. You usually don't play them for the characters or the actual narrative, but rather the gameplay.

"It is fate. Many have tried, yet none have ever managed to escape it's flow."

Slim_in_Blue

@FishyS I can understand why Mario might work, it even works to some extent in the games with story like the RPGs, at least in terms of initial impressions. If you only have time/money to play one RPG and you’re picking between say Paper Mario TTYD and a Final Fantasy, you’ve probably heard that the story is great. But even then you might be skeptical of if you’ll like the characters from what you’ve read, so it might be the safer bet to go with TTYD because of Mario’s status as a mascot. Beyond that TTYD has a fantastic story from what I’ve heard so maybe not the greatest example, but still an example.
@VoidofLight also has a good point though with how most Mario games don’t pride themselves on narrative, at least with the non-RPGs. Usually Mario’s stories are just excuses for him to do a bunch of platforming and beat up Bowser at the end. That’s fine since the series prioritizes gameplay, but it makes it harder to say the characters in Mario are more important than the plot when neither are all that important to begin with.

Just a guy who likes games

Snatcher

@EaglyPurahfan Don’t you dare say I’m going overboard! YOU BETTER TAKE BACK WHAT YOU SAID RIGHT NOW, IM NOT YELLING YOUR YELLING!

Nintendo are like woman, You love them for whats on the inside, not the outside…you know what I mean! Luzlane best girl!

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Matt_Barber

At this rate, the next game in the series will be called The Legend of Purah.

Matt_Barber

Anti-Matter

The using too many waifu female characters with seductive looking on anime and or games are really disturbing me.

Edited on by Anti-Matter

Anti-Matter

jedgamesguy

Slim_in_Blue wrote:

I don’t know how unpopular of an opinion this is, but it sure isn’t one I see at all so I’m just gonna throw it out there.
Good characters are more important than a good story. Story is still really important, don’t get me wrong, but if the characters in the story are written horribly (whatever a “horrible character” is to you), there’s no relatability in the story and no main reason to keep going. The story could be peak fiction, a perfect 10/10, but if the characters are a 3 or 4/10 at best, is it worth continuing the story if the characters acting out the plot suck? If a story’s awful that can wreck it too, but I think there’s more of a grace period if you have a stellar cast of characters. Personally, I’d say if a story has 10/10 characters and like a 7/10 plot, it evens out to a 9/10 overall.
A good example of this is Persona 4 and its spin-offs, a game I can’t stop talking about! P4’s basic plot is a murder mystery, and a pretty good one. Depending on how much you like the genre, I’ve seen people consistently give it somewhere between an 8/10 and a 10/10. But the biggest thing people praise about P4 is the characters. In my case they’re what made the game my favorite game ever. The game is solid and the plot is solid, but I loved the characters so much that they left a noticeable impact on me that’s stuck with me since I finished it. This general idea carried into the spin-offs which have the same cast, but are usually agreed to have lesser plots. They don’t have BAD plots, but they’re generally agreed to be 8/10 at best from what I’ve seen. Personally I’d give the plot of the first spin-off P4 Arena (and Ultimax the updated version) a 7/10 thanks to huge pacing issues. But people still enjoy the stories because the characters they love are still there like they were in the original game, and even the new characters are pretty great too. P4 has helped me realize that a big reason why I love a lot of the stories I do is because the characters are relatable or interesting or just fun, and give the plot more life as a result.
Anyway thanks for coming to my TED Talk! There’s my Persona 4 propaganda for the week! Apologies for the length, I’m typing this on my phone late at night since I can’t fall asleep really. If it’s a bit rambly or incoherent, that’s probably why😅

It's funny, I played Persona 5 first and loved the characters but within a few hours of starting Persona 4 I knew that their cast was a lot better in that game. I dunno what it is about the P4 cast that makes them so endearing (maybe it's the small town-ness or the way they play off each other so well) but it elevated the entire game.

Doesn't hurt that the English VO for Persona 4 is absolutely fantastic too. The actors sounded like they were having so much fun, and the anime's focus on comedy let them shine through even more.

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Slim_in_Blue

@TheJGG I totally agree with you, the characters in P4 are singlehandedly what shot it up to be my favorite game of all time. P5 has a great cast too and still has my all time favorite Persona character with Sumi and third semester is probably the series' peak arc, but it feels like half the time Joker is the ultimate mutual friend which sucks. You never see Sumi interact with any of the Thieves other than Akechi and it's criminal. I don't think it helps that each arc minus endgame mostly focuses on the villain instead of the new party member and you mostly need to do the character's Confidant for their arc.
P4 though, every character of the Investigation Team interacts with every other character and it's incredible. You'd never expect, say, Rise and Kanji to get along, and they might not get along really, but they at least talk to each other. They feel like a smaller and tighter-knit group which fits with the small-town vibe of the whole game. P4 was the only game in the series to actually make me cry and it was thanks to the Golden ending's epilogue and seeing all the group interact with each other and just being genuinely great friends. I'd love to go into more detail and look at P3 as well, but this thread's probably not the best place for it considering it's not a Persona thread.
One last bit though, will absolutely echo the praise for the cast. Each VA fits perfectly and most of the substitute choices in spin-offs are solid as well with some being on par with the originals like Matthew Mercer as Kanji in Arena Ultimax and Dancing. Really the only cast I had actual problems with was 3's (I have a lot of hot takes about P3 for that matter), but 4 has a near-perfect cast.

Just a guy who likes games

Takoda

@Slim_in_Blue
I have yet to play P4 or P5 but I’d just add in short that good characters cannot do without a good story sometimes, and that ‘good characters’ seems to be a much more subjective thing than when people mention a ‘good story’. I know somebody who stopped playing Persona 4 over its characters, and though it hasn’t stopped me from wanting to play it, relatability is usually something very personal. The amount you’ll connect with a character does not come down to just good writing, though it certainly helps, and sometimes just how a character has been written can get on somebody’s nerves while somebody else loves it. In the same way, I could stick with just a bunch of decent characters if the story is amazing because of wanting to see where it ends up next, where the mystery ends up and such. Horribly written characters hurt but a horribly thought out story does too.

Now, my main point is more so that characters can probably not shine as bright if the story they’re in doesn’t give them the opportunity to. If you create a lovely character but then barely use them story-wise in any major way, well, that kind of wastes their character. If you fail to think up fitting opponents or just some force that the characters move against, if they face no adversity or just get handed their wins on a sliver platter, be it in feats of strength or philosophy, that really cuts down on the value that might have had as a character moment. Good characters and good story go hand-in-hand oftentimes, and though one can be better than the other, as could be the case in P4, I’d not say either is more important. It would be missing the point that both are essentially an act of writing, and that characters fitting into a larger whole, inhabiting a world that was also written in service of plot opportunities, means it’s often more about how the two work together. For example, if a story makes it possible for a character to have some amazing moments that strengthen your view on that character, is that because they’re a good character, or because there’s a good story supporting that character so it turns out good? Like in persona 5, you’ve said Sumi gets little interaction with the other thieves, that would be where they didn’t write a story-scenario for this character to shine in interaction with other characters. Her character could’ve shone more if she got the opportunity, it doesn’t make her character inherently worse but it does take away opportunities for her to grow or show new sides of herself that could have been written if the story-scenario allowed it, be it main plot or not. I have a lot more examples from other games but I’d potentially spoil stuff and can’t have that.
It’s a complex thing, and as a writer myself, I hope I can get it down someday to have good character moments inside an interesting plot. Leaving aside a character-driven narrative versus a story-driven one, there’s just a lot of stuff that feels like characters and ‘story’ are more close to each other than two different parts that have their strengths separately.

Now, to end my lil wall of text, P4 is an interesting one simply because you literally have your real life, character-focused part and your ‘labyrinths’ where the story seems to progress. Having played P3 these two overlap sometimes in cutscenes but gameplay-wise they’re very split, and there I’m pretty sure you could have a point that one part just shines more than the other.
… thank you for coming to my own TED talk this time, hehe. Went a little overboard, but it is an interesting topic.

I keep buying fighting games for some reason, even though I barely got anyone to play against.

Switch Friend Code: SW-7519-0735-1595

Slim_in_Blue

@Takoda Thanks for the input! I can't say I'm a writer at all and the last time I wrote anything fiction myself was in like 6th grade which was several years ago, so it's nice having input from someone who knows the ins and outs of writing. It's definitely a tricky thing and story and characters are much more intertwined than I made it seem in the original comment, but a lot of people seem to kinda separate characters from story as individual aspects and then when talking about it as a whole call it the plot. I admit that's not a great way to go about critiquing a storyline, but it's kinda tough when it's something of a norm for non-writers and when it's even tricky for a writer like yourself to balance character moments and story moments. It definitely comes down some to personal preference, this is the unpopular opinion thread for a reason, and some people do prioritize storyline over characters. If you take good characters and put them in a bad plot, if the pacing prevents the characters from, well, being actual characters, then everything will suck as a result. In my opinion, since the characters are what generally drive the plot forward, I'd rather the characters be better than the story if one had to be worse than the other. The characters are the emotional core of the overall plot and if someone finds a set of characters they like and relate to, I assume they'd get more out of the story as a result. I can also understand why someone would prefer the story itself since it's the actual makeup of the plot. As important as characters are, characters without a conflict or goal are completely useless so having a good conflict and/or goal is incredibly important. A writer would (and honestly should) go for the best of both sides since characters and storyline are both so crucially important to any piece of media, but that's nearly impossible since it's probably impossible to make a truly perfect story, and as a result the reader/player/viewer would likely prioritize one or the other just based on personal preference. I'd love to go into more detail on this but I know I'd make myself sound silly if I tried to go further since this was already pretty tricky to write as it is.
I will note on the Persona example, P4 is HEAVILY character driven plot-wise, more than P5 and especially P3. In P3 the party members just kinda unlock spontaneously throughout the first few months and their development is almost entirely outside of Tartarus. In P4, trying my best to not spoil anything from either game, every party member is like that one party member you get in P3 where they get lost inside Tartarus and you have to rescue them, resulting in the awakening of their Persona. Although unlike P3, each of P4's dungeons not only features a trapped party member, it is a representation of their "dark side" which is personified in their Shadow self. The character has to accept their Shadow as a part of themself and that's how they awaken to their Persona, and that character development travels into the social sim aspects as each party member's Social Link is pretty much the second half of their arc as a whole. I realize now that all this probably means P4 isn't the greatest example even in regards to the spin-offs, but it was the game that brought this topic to my mind to begin with, and the spin-offs completely cut out Social Links so it still feels like the spin-offs specifically work as decent examples.

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Snatcher

@Aioniomios pyra is still top five though in my heart though!

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Nintendo are like woman, You love them for whats on the inside, not the outside…you know what I mean! Luzlane best girl!

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Sorry for not being active much recently, but I’m very much alive!

Snatcher

@Slim_in_Blue Characters really do make a story, a story isn’t a story if it doesn’t have good characters to revolve around, luckily most good story’s include well written characters, but when that’s not the case, the good story they set up just ends up being ruined by poorly written character and dialogue.

Nintendo are like woman, You love them for whats on the inside, not the outside…you know what I mean! Luzlane best girl!

(My friend code is SW-7322-1645-6323, please ask me before you use it)

Sorry for not being active much recently, but I’m very much alive!

Takoda

@Slim_in_Blue Good point, it is true that people do kind of spontaneously split it into characters and story separately. I think a lot of writers would do that too, so your point made perfect sense. When a character clicks with someone, it can REALLY click, but a story is a lot less of a personal thing usually so I think in that way, characters can really lay at the heart of something while a plot/story isn’t often something anyone deeply relates to or loves in that same way. I assume that’s kind of what you meant?

Looking forward to giving P4 another spin now that I’ve read the praise here, I’ll see what I end up thinking of it. Thanks for the food for thought, haha.

I keep buying fighting games for some reason, even though I barely got anyone to play against.

Switch Friend Code: SW-7519-0735-1595

Slim_in_Blue

@Takoda Yep! You nailed it on the head. Characters are the most easily relatable aspect of a story, so if someone's looking for something that resonates with them instead of "just" being peak fiction, they'd probably prefer good characters and a weaker plot than a good plot with weaker characters. It's not really an unpopular opinion as much as it is a debate topic, but it's not something I see discussed often so that's why I put it here first. Glad to see it's provided some good discussion!
Have fun with P4 as well! I'm admittedly biased since it left a huge impact on me and was almost instantly my favorite game ever the moment I finished it, but most people agree that every Persona game is good at a minimum and the modern games (3-5) are mostly up to personal preference on which is your favorite. If you liked P3's gameplay, you'll like P4 since it's largely an improvement in most aspects. If you don't like murder mysteries you might not be the biggest fan of the plot, but I hope you enjoy it nevertheless!

Just a guy who likes games

VoidofLight

I don't like the notion that console generations are dead, and I'm not a fan of how Microsoft and Sony kind of pioneered it. This generation has been one of the weaker ones in a while, mainly because a lot of the games are hindered by the anchors that are the last gen consoles. Consoles like the PS4 and Xbox One. I get why they keep releasing their new stuff on the older gen consoles, because for a while it was hard to keep the production of this gen, and thus the games wouldn't sell if they were just confined to current gen. However, I feel like it's become more of a hinderance than anything else on the experiences of these consoles. Instead of getting proper current generation games which make use of the consoles functionality and actual power, for the most part we're getting games which have to run on 7+ year old systems, which begs the question of why should we even really own the newer consoles, aside from maybe better performance. It isn't like the features of the controllers are being actively used.

I genuinely hope that the next generation for Nintendo doesn't end up falling into this pitfall of releasing dual releases for both the Switch and the next gen console. Sure, again you have the one benefit of people still being able to play the game on the older system without having to purchase a new one, but at the same time, you come with the issue that the new games made for the new system won't be able to actually reach their full potential. I like having more unique ways to play games, and see what sort of innovations can be made on how games are handled, and so I feel like this is going to only be more of a hinderance.

Another thing I don't get about this generation is how Microsoft is trying to coin exclusive games as being "bad", when exclusives are genuinely needed in order to actually get people to purchase other consoles. Otherwise, if you could play every game on every system, why even buy the other consoles, when you could just purchase one singular one? It would sink brands which rely on being different in order to keep competing with one another. To some, I feel like this would be a dream, but I don't really want to welcome the monopolistic nightmare that'll be induced by it.

"It is fate. Many have tried, yet none have ever managed to escape it's flow."

FishyS

@VoidofLight I mean, 90% of Switch games could have run on Wii U hardware, either because they are literally ports of older games or just because they don't really need the power of the Switch (a lot of eShop games don't even need Wii U levels of power). It takes a lot of effort to make a game which truly requires a lot of power and most games simply don't need that. If a game doesn't need the extra power, it makes sense to cross-release at least until enough people have bought the new console. We'll see what Nintendo does, but third party games at minimum will almost certainly often keep coming out for both Switch and Switch 2 for awhile.

But games which really need power? You don't see Final Fantasy 16 or Baldur's Gate 3 coming out for PS4 and Switch 2 will similarly be exclusive for games which actually need it.

FishyS

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